post apocalyptic bohemian

A Bedtime Story

Between the 2 great wars, there existed a movement that we now know as The Bright Young Things. They were a smart set of flappers & socialites looking for fun & frolic, mad & gay, chasing their dreams in fast cars during an age of Anything Goes. Their story is captured rather well in a film by Stephen Fry, titled, of course, Bright Young Things (2003), based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (1930).

Stephen Tennant was very much a part of this circle. He born into a life of profound privilege, but he perverted his special station in life by becoming the most beautiful person, male or female, of his generation. He outraged staid society by appearing in public wearing a leather coat with a chinchilla fur collar, putting gold dust in his pretty blond hair & Vaseline on his eyelids, on the arm of his lover, the celebrated poet & pacifist, super-butch, much older Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon brought his fame, his artistic talent, his celebrity to their relationship, while Tennant's only daily activities were dressing-up & reading gossip columns where he was the main subject. Tennant was way-too-thin, way-too-rich, & possessed an extreme elegance that flabbergasted the public on both sides of the Atlantic for half a century.

Tennant’s home was an Arts & Crafts country manor built for his mother. It was his retreat from the vulgar world around him. He brought in 22 tons of silver sand to spread on the lush lawns & planted palm trees. Tropical birds & reptiles were let loose on the grounds. In the winter, he gave them refuge indoors, joining Tennant in his heated bath, surrounded by his seashell collection, lept wet because they looked prettier. His many famous visitors included: Cecil Beaton, David Hockney, Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, Greta Garbo, T.E.Lawrence, Tallulah Bankhead, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Cocteau, & his BFF Willa Cather. Tennant lived in his home for homos, in delicious, decorative detachment.

He left Britain when things became unseemly with that war business. When his NYC acquaintances met his ship at the pier, they had to have been startled to see a rail-thin man walking down the gangway with Marcelle waves in his hair, wearing makeup, & holding a bouquet of orchids. When a tough US customs official yelled out in disgust: "Pin 'em on!", Tennant countered: "Oh… have you got a pin? You kind, kind creature."

Tennant & Cather must have made quite the interesting couple around NYC. She was the sturdy notoriously no nonsense author of O' Pioneers!, & he was a slip of a man with eyeliner & scarves. Tennant had advised: “ I insist on an absolute ban on facial grimacing or harsh, wrinkle-forming laughter.” Cather encouraged him to write, but the novel that obsessed him for the last 50 years of his life, remained unfinished when he died. Tennant did publish several slim volumes of poetry.

At the end of WW2, Tennant returned to England & went to bed. For the next 17 years he lulled about on pillows. Perfumed & prettified, with ribbons attached to his dyed comb-over, Tennant was not concerned about his newly plump figure: "I'm beautiful, & the more of me there is the better I like it!” He simply stayed in bed surrounded by the things he loved: jewelry, drawings, an Elvis Presley postcard, fishnets & seashells, bolts of pink satin, gold statues, & the pet birds & lizards. Those famous friends may have snickered, but Tennant was in on the joke from the start.

A telling anecdote has him regretting giving a present to a friend because “I’m not sure if she loves it as intensely as I do”.

As he got older, Tennant would travel to nearby villages to go shopping wearing tight pink shorts & tablecloth as a skirt. His family had all but given up on him long before. His circle showed only bemused resignation, a trait my husband uses today while dealing with me. Writer V. S. Naipaul says of Tennant: "His shyness wasn't so much a wish not to be seen as a wish to be applauded on sight."

Tennant passed away peacefully, in bed, of course, when he was 81 years old. Cecil Beaton had predicted: “He will be the last of us to go…”, & so he was, leaving this wretched world in 1987. Transcendent disregard for the rules of polite society was Tennant's lasting contribution to our gay history.

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John Waters is undoubtedly one of my favorite people on the planet & one of my best reading experiences of the current decade was making my way through his memoir Role Models (2011), a collection of essays about his idols, some living, some dead, most dating back to his teenage years. Under my New Austerity Program, I borrowed this book from the library after making a pledge to check out books from my local branch rather than purchasing them in hardback from Powell’s. I loved Role Models so much; I bought it anyway, even though I had already studied every page, before returning the library edition.

Waters & I share a passion for Tennessee Williams. His started early in life, the nuns at his Baltimore Catholic school told Waters that if he saw a film written by Tennessee Williams he would go “straight to hell”, so naturally he headed for the library to find the “joyous, alarming, sexually confusing” writer who “saved my life”.

We both have a thing for Johnny Mathis. In his Mathis essay, Waters remembers seeing a basement full of his friends French kissing to Johnny Mathis music. Waters explains: “I knew then that not only did I want to be a teenager… I wanted to be an exaggeration of a teenager.” Note that Waters wanted to be a teen, as if being a teenager were not simply a matter of putting in the time, but a lifestyle. You could actually fail at Teenagerdom if you didn't do it right."

One of my favorites of the essays in Role Models is about Mexican porn director Bobby Garcia, “who has blown hundreds & hundreds of really cute marines & lived to tell about it”, & whose favorite film turns out to be TheHours (2002). Garcia claims to have seen it at least 25 times.

Waters writing is stealthy surprising, full of devotion & delight. I often feel that writing for the screen must be the ultimate place that all writers dream of escaping, but here Waters is just the opposite: a filmmaker who writes a book that feels joyous & celebratory. He is allowed to be the fan he wants to be in Role Models.

Maxims from John Waters:

“Be interested in other people's behavior & try to figure out why they did it. That's what's so interesting to me, & it's not quite so obvious, & everybody has horror stories, everybody has secrets, everybody has things they've done that they're still trying to explain why they did. So if you can understand why other people did it, then maybe you'll be better with yourself, & you can be a happy neurotic, which is what I'm trying to be.”

“I write about being gay in a refined way. I'm trying to give it grace, a word I would never normally say. I also hate the word ‘journey’& ‘craft’ & ‘rigorous’ & ‘openly gay’, which always makes me laugh. Do they say, Openly heterosexual So-&-So is appearing tonight? & that phrase ‘practicing homosexual’. Like, if he keeps practicing, he'll get it right. First of all, I never call myself a gay artist. History decides if you're an artist. I certainly think I'm equally right for gay & straight people."

“I don't have a gay agenda, although I vote gay. If someone said they were against gay marriage, I wouldn't vote for them. But I have no desire to mimic something Larry King does 8 times, & I like Larry King. Good for him! He's helping us. I hope he gets married 10 more times. Just don't make me do what you want to do.”

The self-dubbed “King Of Filth” has directed 17 transgressive films since Hag In A Black Leather Jacket in 1968, including Pink Flamingos (1972), Polyester (1981), Hairspray(1988), Serial Mom (1994), & my Favorite John Waters flick, the rather sweet, even tender Pecker (1998).

Last year I very much enjoyed his funny book about his adventures as a hitchhiker, Carsick. In one chapter, Waters tells about being picking up by Myersville, Maryland’s 20 year old Republican councilman Brett Bidle, who thought Waters was a homeless man. Worried about Waters, he agrees to drive him to Ohio, 4 hours away. Later, Waters reconnects with Bidle in Denver. Bidle then drives him to Reno, 1000 miles west. Before moving on, Waters arranges for Bidle to use his San Francisco apartment.

I admire Waters’ assortment of friends which include would be Presidential assassin Squeaky Fromme, bank robbing heiress Patricia Hearst, former porn actor Traci Lords, Kathleen Turner& Johnny Depp.

He says that making his kind of films is too expensive for him nowadays, it is rough getting financing. I hope he has one more in him. I would like John Waters to be a guest at one of my moonlit summer garden parties. He can bring anyone he wants as his guests.

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Born in 1928, Edwin Parker Twombly Jr. should have had the life a Virginia gentleman, but instead he became one of the last century’s most important artists, the lover & friend of fellow artist Robert Rauschenberg& the pal of the great artistic circle of the 1950s NYC Avant-Garde: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ray Johnson,& Jasper Johns, one of my favorite periods.

In the mid-1950s, Cy Twombly& Rauschenberg did the grand tour thing in Europe. Rauschenberg returned to NYC & became very, very famous, but basically Twombly stayed, settling in Italy, just in time for the Art World to shift decisively from Europe to NYC. Life in Italy & its impressions of classicism informed Twombly’s work & was symbolic of his idiosyncrasies, a sense of the modern but also the ancient.

He avoided publicity throughout his life & he ignored the critics, who questioned constantly whether his work deserved a place at the forefront of 20th century Abstractionism. Twombly’s paintings, favorites of The Husband & mine, thrillingly viewed in museums in Italy & the USA, are huge, complex & detailed, with scratches, erasures, paint drips, graphite, & containing fragments of Italian & classical verse amid scrawled phalluses. His works references the high European culture of the past, & mostly ignored modern American issues.

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The prolific Twombly became one of the key figures in late 20^th century art & his paintings hang in the most important museums including MOMA, the Louvre, even our own Portland Art Museum. Even in his lifetime, Twombly’s painting sold in the millions of dollars. After his death in 2011, the prices hit the stratosphere. Last year, his work, BLACKBOARD, sold at auction for $69.6 million.

Living in Italy, Twombly met Tatiana Franchetti, an Italian aristocrat. They married in NYC, in 1959, in Rome. But, at the same time, he began a relationship with Nicola Del Roscio who was Twombly‘s assistant, archivist & lover for more 50 years. Twombly kept a home & studio close to Del Roscio’s place in Gaeta, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he painted some of the most noted canvases.

Susan Sontag, herself a closet case, wrote famously in her NOTES ON CAMP: "Many things in the world have not been named, & many things, even if they have been named, have never been described."When Twombly’s obits were written, even the one in the NY Times, his relationships with Rauschenberg or Del Roscio were not mentioned, although they found a way to include his wife, who died the year before, & their children & grandchildren. But, last month’s NY Times’ T Magazine had a terrific & colorful feature on Del Roscio with many telling details of their life together & wonderful photographs of their homes in Italy.

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The B-52s have earned the title of the "World's Greatest Party Band", yet they call themselves a "tacky little dance band from Athens, Georgia".

They dared to be different & way out there long before Lady Gaga& they welcomed along everyone else who did the same. They were always embraced by The Gays. Decades before Born This Way, the B-52’s had a little ditty called Junebug: "Well, don't you listen to what they say / We're a little different anyway / Ain't it the truth, uh huh."

Following drinks at an Athens Chinese restaurant in October 1976, a group of friends formed The B-52s & named themselves after Southern slang for big bouffant hairdos, not the bomb dropping aircraft. The band soon attracted an ardent following, becoming the talk of Athens. They were soon doing gigs at CBGB, sometimes on the same bill with the Ramones, Television, & Blondie.

Their self-titled debut sold more than 500,000 copies & spawned the hits Rock Lobster& 52 Girls. The B-52s continue to take their dance party music revolution into the 21st century, & they show no signs of slowing down. 35+ years & over 25 million album sales later, the B-52s remain are still going strong. The band is playing a concert in NYC at Irving Plaza next month & here in my own Portland at the Oregon Zoo on the 46^th anniversary of Stonewall, June 28^th. The band’s cool mix of punk, new wave & surf rock certainly kept me dancing in the late 1970s & 1980s, & that accomplishment wouldn’t have been possible without Ricky Wilson (God rest his soul), Keith Strickland, Fred Schneider, Cindy Wilson, & today’s birthday girl, Kate Pierson.

3 members of B-52s’ quartet are out & proud gay people, including Pierson. She continues to give us style, wit, fun retro-cool with her music. Pierson has also worked with R.E.M., Iggy Pop, & was one of the members of NiNa, a band that achieved huge success in Japan in the 1990s.

In her down time, Pierson operates 2 little motels, Kate's Lazy Meadow, in the Catskills, & Kate’s Lazy Desert Airstream Motelin the Mojave Desert, along with her partner of 13 years, Monica Coleman.

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In 2012, after reading my post about Pierson’s birthday, a friend told her about my fandom & I ended up with an invitation from Kate herself, offering The Husband & me her house seats & asking that we meet backstage post-concert. It was a sexy shimmy shake of a summer evening & quite the thrill to hang out with this amazing woman, still dancing strong at 67 years old. How cool is that?

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When I was a little baby gay, my mother dropped me off, all on my own at 9 years old, at Spokane’s Post Theatre for the Saturday first matinee showing of the film version of the Broadway hit Bye Bye Birdie. I was gobsmacked & have never quite recovered. The very next day, after church, I set up my room’s summer window fan in the bathroom as a wind machine, & sang the title song in the manner of Ann-Margret, moving closer to the bathroom mirror & pulling back to gain the effect of the camera work. I was especially adept at having that little catch in my voice, just like the 22 year old star of the movie. I can still do it today, although I no longer have hair to be blown around & flounced.

Since making her debut in A Pocket Full Of Miracles (1961) opposite Bette Davis, Ann-Margret has acted in 75 films & receiving 2 Oscar Nominations: Carnal Knowledge (1971) & Tommy (1975). She has won 5 Golden Globe Awards, 2 Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors GuildAward, & 5 Emmy Awards. Besides the 2 films mentioned, I especially admire her work in A Streetcar Named Desire(1986) as an especially vivid & unhinged Blanche DuBois, great comic work in the 18^th century set Joseph Andrews (1977) as Lady Booby, & showing her acting chops in the horror thriller Magic (1978) opposite Anthony Hopkins.

She was born in Sweden, on this very day, in 1941. Ann-Margret moved with her family to Chicago when she was 6 years old. She was discovered by George Burns, who put her in his nightclub act. She had a passionate affair with Elvis Presley while filming Viva Las Vegas (1964). He asked Ann-Margret to marry him. Thankfully she declined, or she might have eventually become a Scientologist.

At the finish of filming of Bye Bye Birdie there was a wrap party, & the director, producers & the cast including stars Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde, & Janet Leigh, all gave speeches extolling the extraordinary talents of Ann-Margret. When it was her turn, Maureen Stapleton, who played Van Dyke’s overbearing mother announced: "I guess I'm the only person in the room who doesn't want to fuck Ann-Margret."

In 1972, Ann-Margret survived a dramatic fall from a concert stage in Lake Tahoe that shattered her face & left her in a coma. She fought back through tedious reconstructive surgeries & convalescence. Within a year she was back on stage. Anne-Margaret:"I really believed I was spared by God in 1972 because I had so much left to do." She has been married to Roger Smith, known for his acting & his hotness in the hit series 77 SunsetStrip (1958-64), & also her manager, for 48 years.

She is my kind of entertainer: nightclubs, Vegas, films, TV, & stage. She turns 74 years old today, she still looks gorgeous, & she still keeps working. Ann-Margret was a guest star in an episode of Law & Order: SVU in 2010 & she won an Emmy for that performance. She had a terrific story arc on Showtime’s Ray Donovan last season. I have been so inspired by this beautiful & talented lady, that I have a chapter in my own upcoming memoir Jockstraps & Vicodin, titled Kitten With A Whip.

Ann-Margret tells this story about when auditioned for Burns:

“I wore this light blue lambswool sweater & black stockings & little black one-inch shoes that I had worn all through the summer, because that’s all I had! & that’s the way Mr. Burns saw me. So on opening night, that’s what I wore. But then I searched all over the place for something that I thought would be really nice in Las Vegas, & it was more money than I had ever spent. It was an orangey-red velvet pantsuit, & pantsuits were just coming into style. At dress rehearsal Mr. Burns saw this outfit, & he said: ‘Where’s the sweater & pants that you wore on the audition… the tight sweater & the tight pants?’ I said, ‘Well, I thought that this was really nice & that you’d like it.’ & he said, ‘People don’t want to only hear your voice, they want to see where it’s coming from!' I never forgot that.”

Ann-Margret sang Happy Birthday to George Burns on his 100^th birthday.

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Seemingly impossible, I did not read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD as a young person & I didn’t see the film until 2005, at the Husband’s insistence. I certainly would have been better briefed for adulthood if I had encountered this masterpiece American novel in my early teens rather than early 50s.

Harper Lee is a noiseless nonconformist. Her cold shoulder toward celebrity is challenging to conceive in today's culture, especially for a popular writer. Lee hoped her book would meet a "quick & merciful death”. It achieved immortality, probably the most popular American novel of the 20th century. The film version has a perfect screenplay by Horton Foote that is so spot on that the movie & the book have merged in most peoples’ heads.

In 1950, a young frumpy girl, fresh from the University Of Alabama, minus her law degree, moved to NYC from her hometown of Monroeville. She didn't think she was up to much, just renewing her friendship with her childhood buddy Truman Capote. She said she was writing a book & that was that. She published that book in 1960.

That book is a barely disguised version of her Alabama family & her town’s Southern racial consciousness, but it is also about Lee & Capote, childhood chums who become personally & artistically linked legends. They were precocious children with little in common with the other kids in the town. Lee was too rough for the girls, & Capote was too soft for the boys. They each had emotionally remote mothers. Capote's mother was a self- centered social climber; Lee's mother was deeply depressed. Capote's father attempted to seduce Lee in her teens, & she punched him in the nose. Capote hated Lee's gossipy mother, & later used her in a story called MRS. BUSYBODY.

Lee has wry sense of humor. She was the editor of the humor magazine at the University Of Alabama. When told that her book had great appeal for children, Lee stated: "But I hate children. I can't stand them."

Lee became a great friend to Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. She remains close to the actor's family. Peck's grandson, Harper Peck Voll, is named after her. In 2205, she was portrayed on film twice, in 2 different Capote bio-pics, by Catherine Keener & Sandra Bullock. Lee continues to live a quiet, private life in NYC & Monroeville. She remains active in her church & community. She avoids anything to do with her popular novel (still selling a million copies a year & having never been out of print).

She finished her first novel in 1955 & waited 5 years to publish it on the advice of her editor who worried it would be too provocative. Lee’s second novel, GO SET A WATCHMAN is set to be published on July 14, 55 years after her first.

Lee celebrates her 89^th birthday today.

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Alice Babette Toklas left Seattle for Paris when she was 30 years old. In Paris she met writer Gertrude Stein. The 2 women fell in love & were a couple for the next 39 years, living through WW1 & WW2, the apex of The Lost Generation, & sharing a collection of very famous friends. They were positively partners. Toklas was Stein’s secretary, editor, critic, & muse.

Their books' titles were quite deceptive. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS was written Stein & had next to nothing to do with Toklas. THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOKBOOK was not actually a culinary tome although it contains recipes, but more a memoir of a life with friends like Janet Flanner, Picasso, Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, & Virgil Thomson.

Toklas lived another 20 years beyond Stein’s death. At the end of her life she was broke. After Stein’s passing the family claimed their collection of famous paintings & the royalties. In those final years Toklas was plagued with financial problems & she had no choice except to write a memoir.

The much renowned recipe for marijuana brownies started when Toklas signed a contract with Harper's to write a cookbook in 1952. She was a known as a very good cook, but what Harper’s wanted was not so much recipes but tales of her life with Gertrude Stein.

Toklas, then in her mid-70s, didn’t have enough pages to call her tome a book. She added several recipes, included among them was the one that would become renowned: “This is the food of Paradise. It might provide entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR, with euphoria & brilliant storms of laughter, ecstatic reveries & extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better."

The editors at Harper's spotted the suspicious special cannabis ingredient & cut the recipe out, but the publisher of the British edition didn't. The press promptly went nuts. The London Times: "The late poetess Gertrude Stein & her constant companion & autobiographee, Alice B. Toklas, used to have gay old times together in the kitchen. Some of the unique delicacies that were whipped up will soon be cataloged, in a wildly epicurean tome which is already causing excited talk on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps the most gone concoction was her Hashish Fudge." The book would go on to be the best seller for either of the lesbian pair.

Here is the recipe: "Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds & peanuts: chop these & mix them together. A bunch of Canibus Sativa should be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit & nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake & cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. 2 pieces are quite sufficient. Obtaining the cannabis may present certain difficulties. It should be picked & dried as soon as it has gone to seed & while the plant is still green."

Just a few years ago, I had an acquaintance (now living in Oakland with a cute husband) that made a variation of this recipe. With only one half of a serving, I was unable to raise my head off the pillow. Her advice: “Don’t sit down. After you eat one you need to go hiking or dancing. Keep moving.” I was left giggling, horny & hungry & unable to move. 2 summers ago, at a neighborhood backyard party, I consumed an entire special brownie & after laughing until I was sick & to the horror of my neighbors, I had to crawl home on my hands & knees because I was unable to stand. Last year during treatment for that damn cancer, I finally found the proper dose by following Toklas’ directions.

Although Toklas converted to Catholicism late in life, the 2 Jewish lesbians are buried next to each other in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

The Toklas name would become a part of the vernacular of the pot smoking world.

May Day has to be the Teabaggers favorite holiday; they just love to celebrate the seeds of Socialism & Labor Unions, mixed with a little Paganism. I am sure that they would find solidarity with me. I am after all, a union member SAG-AFTRA, AEA, & a solid supporter of workers' rights.

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May 1st just might have more holidays than any other day of the year. It is a celebration of Spring. It is a day of political protests. It is a pagan festival, the Feast Day Of Saint Philip & Saint James, the patron saints of laborers, & a day for the solidarity of organized labor. In many countries, it is a national holiday. In medieval England, people would celebrate by going to the woods to go “A-Maying”, gathering greenery & flowers. Another English tradition is the Maypole. Some villages had permanent maypoles that would stay up all year; others put up a new one each May. The pole, a phallic symbol of virility, would be hung with greenery & ribbons, brightly painted, & decorated, & served as the focus for the zany festivities.

In many countries, May Day is also Labor Day. This originates with the USA labor movement OF the late 19th Century. On May 1, 1886, unions across the country went on strike, demanding that the standard workday be shortened to 8 hours. The organizers of these strikes included Socialists, Anarchists, & organized labor movements. Rioting in Chicago's Haymarket Square, including a bomb thrown by an anarchist, led to the deaths of a dozens of people & the injury of over 100 more.

Sometimes a riot can have positive results, 8 hour work days did become the standard for most people, if not for me. Labor leaders around the world took the American strikes as a rallying point, choosing May Day as a day for protests, parades, & pep talks. It was a major state holiday in the former USSR & other communist countries.

Portland has 2 parades this afternoon, one forImmigrant Rights Coalition & another organized by Don't Shoot Portland rallying against excessive force by police. The local TV news says to expect 10,000 + people to participate. Occupy Portland will be clashing with the Portland police, it is an annual tradition, like the May Pole. In Portland, with more strip clubs than churches, I am sure many a pole will be A-Maying today.

I am too old to be proletariat. I am going to stay home & do as little actual labor as I can muster. & remember kids: YOU DON’T NEED FUN TO HAVE DRUGS.

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I have never performed in a play by William Inge although I have studied & admired his work. I have it on good authority that my terrier Juniorwants the chance to play the title role in Come Back, Little Sheba in my theatre company The Backyard Playerssummer production of that American classic to be performed at the 12th annual block party on July 4th. It will be playing in repertory the rest of the summer along with a production of that 2 character musical about married life I Do, I Do, in which I will be playing both roles, & the musical version of Grey Gardens featuring an all-raccoon cast. It is certainly shaping up to be an astounding theatrical summer season on my block.

Inge is our American Chekhov. On the surface he created common conversation about the smallness of people’s lives, but the characters go very deep. Human pain permeates Inge’s dramas. His major works: ComeBack, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1953), Bus Stop (1957), & Dark At The Top Of TheStairs (1959) all became successful films featuring top Hollywood stars. Middle-America born & raised, Inge’s wrote works that reveal rustic small-town Americans struggling with sexual repression, alcoholism, gossip & religiosity. These themes haunted Inge his entire life.

Inge won the Pulitzer for Picnic in 1953 & in 1961 he received an Academy Award for the screenplay of the Splendor In The Grass, a heartbreaking depictions of teenage angst & confusion in the midst of adult pettiness & despair, starring an improbably beautiful, young Natalie Wood& Warren Beatty.

In the 1950s, Inge had quite the run of hits. Even his buddy & mentor, Tennessee Williams, was envious of his success. Yet, he would still spend his lifetime seeking the validation of the citizens of Independence, Kansas who scorned him for being gay.

Inge was talented & tortured, not that unusual for a gay man of his era. His long struggle with booze, depression, & the profound shame over his homosexuality plagued him before, during, & after his decade of great success.

In 1973, insecure & sometimes unstable, but still considered one of our nation’s best & most successful playwrights, Inge ran out of reasons to continue a life in the closet. He went into the garage of his Hollywood home, shut the door, & behind the wheel of his brand new automobile, he turned the ignition key. He was 60 years old.

"Death makes us all innocent, & weaves all our private hurts & griefs & wrongs into the fabric of time, & makes them a part of eternity."

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Someone stole my beloved Keith Haring Swatch watch. I think I know who it was, but when queried, they denied any possibility that they were responsible for it having gone missing. This morning, I saw the same watch on eBay for $1600. The Husband stated:“you couldn't get $1600 for that watch. You loved that Swatch into a state of 'very used'. I wish I had $1600, I would buy you a new one.”

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For most of the 1980s, I had prints of Haring’s drawings & paintings, torn from Interview Magazine, displayed on the fridge. Unbelievable, there is a Haring, held by an Andy Warhol magnet on my stainless steel refrigerator this morning. Some things just don’t change. The display face on my iPhone phone is a Keith Haring barking dog.

Keith Allen Haring grew up in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch farm community. As a child, he fervently drew cartoons & gradually progressed to more complex compositions. He attended a showing of Andy Warhol's work when he was in his teens, & was impressed by the artist's flat lines, his use of pop icons & mundane objects, & Warhol’s entire concept of mass-produced art. Warhol's elevation of the commonplace into high art would be the crux of Haring's own work.

Haring moved to NYC in 1980 to be at the center of both the art world & the gay community. At 22 years old he began to create his own graffiti, ambiguous looking animals & human figures on all 4s, painted in the subways. Haring eventually found a job as an assistant to NYC gallery owner Tony Shafrazi, who gave him his first major exhibition in 1982.

During the mid-1980s, Haring's pieces brought him wealth & celebrity. His collectors included Yoko Ono, Dennis Hopper, & even Warhol himself. Madonna explains that his art had such a vast appeal because:

"There was a lot of innocence & a joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world."

Haring was among that first generation of gay men lost in the first wave of the epidemic. He was diagnosed with HIV in late 1988, but he continued his art until the very end, when he could hardly hold a pencil or brush. Haring's bold lines & figures carry poignant messages of vitality & unity. His legacy made a lasting impact on late 20th century art & beyond.

Haring was just 31 years old when he left this wretched world in 1990. He would have been 57 years old today. I cried this morning thinking about writing this post: for Keith being gone too soon, too young, for my loss of innocence, & for that missing Keith Haring Original Swatch.

Until his death, Haring was devoted to creating cultural awareness about HIV & other gay rights issues. The Keith Haring Foundation was established in 1989 to assist with HIV related & children's charities. It still maintains the archives of his work. Haring generously contributed his talents to art workshops for kids, created logos & posters for public service agencies, & produced murals, sculptures, & paintings to benefit health centers for disadvantaged communities. His foundation continues his legacy indefinitely. Haring leaves me with a more positive vision for the future.

"My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can. Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man & the world. It lives through magic."

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I have a passion for 20th century American Art & I have always been fascinated with the NYC of the 1950s, when these geniuses produced their astonishing works while in the closet, but whose gayness was really an open secret: Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Andy Warhol, TennesseeWilliams, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, ChristopherIsherwood, W.H. Auden, James Merrill, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Lincoln Kirstein, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Langston Hughes, Philip Johnson.

Jasper Johns was a Southern Gentleman from South Carolina. In 1953, after a stint in the army, he moved to NYC with the notion of becoming of an artist or maybe a writer. Within just a few years he had created the iconic Flag, & White Flag, within a half a decade he would have 4 paintings in the permanent collection of MOMA. Within a decade, he would be considered the greatest living American artist.

Johns fell in love with fellow artist Robert Rauschenberg, who became an inspiration to the younger artist. Rauschenberg:

“We gave each other permission.”

Spurring each other on creatively, Johns painted works of familiar objects: numerals, letters, maps, flags & letters that captivated the art world, when NYC was the center of all things art. Johns & Rauschenberg were lovers from 1955-1961, the era of their best & most important work. They had living/working lofts in the same building & traveled freely between their 2 spaces. Although the men lived & worked together, it was Johns who received the most acclaim.

Johns:

“I don’t want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.”

Johns painted conventional subjects which left the critics to ponder the explanation of his rough brush work & saturnine surfaces. Johns’ work is about tension, between knowing & not knowing, the explained & the unexplained. His paintings hold secrets.

His 1955, work Target With Plaster Casts consisted of 9 wooden boxes with hinged doors, each box holding of a body part. One of them held an realistic penis. A representative of the Museum Of Modern Art asked if it would be acceptable if that particular box stayed closed. Johns answered that it would be all right to keep the lid closed some of the time but not all of the time.

In NYC, Johns met musical composer John Cage& his partner choreographer Merce Cunningham, significant contributors to the world of modern dance. Johns collaborated with Cunningham’s dances by designing sets & costumes. He became an artistic advisor to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Johns, Cage & Cunningham collaborated in 1973 on Cunningham’s piece Un Jour Ou Deux. These 4 gay men never displayed explicit homosexual content in any of their works.

Johns & Rauschenberg split up because of the discomfort of being recognized as a couple outside of their circle. Rauscheberg:

“What had been sensitive & tender became gossip”.

Johns recalled the time he was reading Gertrude Stein’s TheAutobiography Of Alice B.Toklas& Rauschenberg stated: “One daythey’ll be writing about us like that.”Johns was not pleased by Rauschenberg’s comparison to the famous lesbian couple.

Their breakup was so bitter that they both left NYC. They didn't speak for more than a decade. In 1961, when the relationship was falling apart, Johns produced a painting In Memory Of My Feelings, Frank O’Hara, taking the name from a poem by O’Hara that addresses gay love & the price paid for suppressing it. The poem's first line:

“My quietness has a man in it.”

In 2006, John’s painting False Start (1957) was sold by David Geffen to a private buyer for 80 million, the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist. Johns has become more & more reclusive through the years. He made an appearance of sorts on an episode of The Simpsons in 1999, playing an artist named Jasper Johns. He lives alone on an estate in rural Connecticut. He rarely grants interviews. Johns’ & Rauschenberg’s relationship was the deepest & most important of their entire lives. Rauschenberg died 5 years ago this week.

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”

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“You know that bank I used to cry all the way to? Well, I bought it.”

Here is the craziest part, The Husband & I briefly lived in Las Vegas (long story) & even nuttier, we didn’t have an automobile. I would actually walk in the 100 degree heat to the theatre where I was in rehearsal. There were no sidewalks. It was just me & the lizards. My route took me right by the Liberace Museum, just a few blocks from our condo. I always glanced in & I savored the camp factor, but somehow never went in.

Overheard on the MAX Train:

Older Gay Guy: “That guy is so gay.”

Other Guy: “Totally gay.”

Older Gay Guy: “Liberace gay.”

Ironic, the man spent his lifetime hiding the truth & denied being gay to the very end.

Liberace was an international superstar dating back to the early 1950s. HIS averaged income was $5 million a year for more than 35 years. In the 1970s, The Guinness Book Of World Recordsidentified Liberace as the world's highest paid musician.

He was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace in a Milwaukee suburb to poor parents. He was classically trained on the piano as a youth & made his concert debut as a soloist at just 11 years old. As a teenager during the depression he played piano in speakeasies to make money for his family.

In 1940, Liberace moved to NYC. His charm & piano skills paid off. Within a few years he was touring the hotel lounge circuit. His tale might have ended there, except that Las Vegas & TV discovered Liberace’s considerable charms. By the early 1950s he began playing extended runs in Las Vegas. He would appear at the showrooms at the casinos regularly for the rest of his life. As Las Vegas grew, so did Liberace's fame.Las Vegas is a place built on fantasy, superficiality & unbridled spending, Liberace's very essence. Las Vegas & Liberace both proved the same adage: “Nothing Succeeds Like Excess”.

Liberace appearances on TV cemented his superstar status. In the early 1950s, Liberace had a weekly variety series where he would play his elaborate piano, sing & dance a little, praise his mother Frances who was always in the audience, & make jokes about the show’s band leader his brother George. His TV show was a huge hit, carried by more stations than I Love Lucy.

In 1954, the year I was born, Liberace played to capacity crowds at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, Hollywood Bowl. In 1955 he opened at the Riviera in Las Vegas with a salary of $50,000 per week, becoming the city's highest paid entertainer. He bought lavish mansions, remodeled them extravagantly & filled them with ornate pianos, antiques, & rococo furniture. He installed a piano shaped swimming pool.

Liberace's musical repertoire included a unique mix of classical, film themes, cocktail jazz & sentimental ballads. He knew thousands of songs & could play almost any request from the audience. He would edit his classical pieces to just less than 5 minutes:

"I took out the boring parts. I know just how many notes my audience will stand for. If there's any time left over, I fill in with a lot of runs up & down the scale."

Liverace commissioned more elaborate costumes as the years went by. Eventually he was spending $50,000 each season on bigger, nuttier, ever more opulent costumes. He wore a cape made with $60,000 worth of chinchilla, a tuxedo embedded with diamonds spelling out his name, & a King Neptune costume covered in pearls & sea shells weighing 200 pounds. He had large rings shaped like a candelabra & a grand piano, each studded with diamonds. He was the Elton John of his time.

To the act, Liberace added showgirls, jugglers, singers, giant water fountains, light shows, a full orchestra, even an elephant. He flew above the stage from a cable in a feather cape. He toured with a grand piano covered with thousands of glittering mirror tiles.

Liberace emphatically denied his gayness throughout his long career. He evidently thought that coming out of the closet would hurt his popularity. His female fans refused to recognize the obvious. In 1957, Confidential magazine featured the headline: "Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be 'Mad About The Boy’!” Gossip rags frequently implied that he was gay. He successfully sued 2 publications that attempted to out him. He had a series of “beards” including our beloved Betty White.

Liberace’s denials unraveled when he was sued for palimony in 1983 by his “chauffeur” ScottThorson, who had been living with Liberace for years. Liberace had Thorson on the payroll, dressed him up like himself, & paid for plastic surgery to have Thorson look like a young Liberace. Even this bizarre scandal didn't put a dent in Liberace's popularity. The case was eventually settled out of court for less than $100,000.

Liberace was at the apex of his career in the mid-1980s. At Radio CityMusic Hall he had 3 extended engagements. From 1984-86 he sold out 56 shows in a row. Liberace called the Radio City shows "the fulfillment of a dream & the culmination of my 40 years in show business." Liberace’s fortune continued to grow. He owned houses all over the world & had all of his clothes made especially for him. He even had the front of a Rolls Royce attached to the back of a VW Beatle so he could drive both of his favorite cars at once.

Liberace was in a steady relationship with Jamie Wyatt when the gay world was introduced to the plague. It has never been clear when Liberace discovered that he was HIV+, probably early in the plague, possibly as early as 1985.

In the press, he attributed his sudden weight loss to the popular watermelon diet. After a last tour to promote his new book The Things ILove, Liberace became seriously sick. He spent 4 days in the hospital, but he decided to go home & die comfortably surrounded by all his opulent stuff. He spent his last days at home with his 27 dogs, watching episodes of The Golden Girls. With his family & partner by his side, Liberace took that final bow in early 1987. Only then did the world acknowledge his secret life & his illness.

Liberace lived a life of high showmanship & utter flamboyance. His fervor for everything fabulous & his considerable talent touched the hearts of his legion of mostly female fans. For decades he did influence many other artists from Elvis to Adam Lambert. Liberace is absolute proof that being fabulous can be a life unto itself.

Steven Soderbergh's film version of the Liberace/Scott Thorson story Behind The Candelabra starring Michael Douglas& Matt Damon, made for HBO, was easily one of my favorite films of 2013. I give it a strong A on The Steve Report Card. I strongly believed that Damon’s ass deserved an Emmy Award. When I saw it, I was really ready for just a little sparkle in my own life.

Today is a High Holy Day in Gaydom: The birthday of Cher.

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Cher & I have something in common & I don't mean sleeping with DavidGeffen. We have both been on our Living Proof: The Farewell Tour for the past 2 1/2 decades. Cher's tour is the most successful tour by a female solo artist of all time. I felt lucky to book my own backyard.

Cher dropped out of high school at age 16 & moved to LA. She had her initial taste of Hollywood stardust when she was involved in a minor car accident with Warren Beatty. He then seduced her. Cher remembers the encounter as "a disappointment".

Cher has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, & 3 Golden Globe Awards for her work in film, music & TV. Cher is the only female solo artist to reach the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in each of the previous 5 decades. I think she showed serious acting chops as early as the sketches on the Sonny & Cher Show. Cher was absolutely terrific, & Oscar nominated, as a lesbian in Mike Nichol's Silkwood (1983) opposite Meryl Streep. Moonstruck (1987) is on my Top 10 movies Of All Time list (& one of my favorite soundtrack albums).

Cher's career had some ups & downs, but all the downs were followed by another hit record or a first rate acting achievement like Robert Altman's ComeBack To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). The longevity of her musical career has brought Cher some amazing stats: the oldest female performer to chart a #1 hit, withBelieve in 1999, when she was 53 years old. She first hit the with I Got You Babe in 1965, & had a hit with Song For The Lonely in 2002, that’s a span of 37 years! Cher also holds the record for the longest gap between #1 songs, from Dark Lady in 1974 to Believein 1999. With a recording career lasting nearly 50+ years, Cher has sold over 150 million records. Cher returned to Las Vegas in 2008 where she performed her show Cherfor 5 years at the Coliseum at Caesar’s Palace. Cher & Las Vegas are a perfect match. No one in the history of show biz has had a career of the magnitude & scope of Cher's. She has been a teenage pop star, a TV star, a fashion icon, a rock star, a pop singer, a Broadway actress, an Academy Award-winning film star, a disco sensation, & the subject of just a little bit of press coverage.

Cher is an active member Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG), & has admitted to having had affairs with women in the 1970s (but who of us has not?). Never one to hold back her opinions, Cher has a very active Twitter account. I follow her & Cher never lets me down on the social media. It is my understanding that Gay People love Cher.

“In showbiz it takes time to be really good & by that time, you're obsolete.”

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On this day, May 21st, in 1979, inside a jury room in San Francisco, 12 people had been deliberating whether to find former City Supervisor Dan White guilty of murdering Mayor George Moscone& gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk on the morning of November 27, 1978. White's attorney mounted what became famously known as the "Twinkie defense", arguing that White had temporarily gone nutty because of the sugary snacks he had consumed.

The jury rendered its verdict finding White guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, saving him from getting the death sentence.

The pain & shock over the assassinations of the pair of beloved progressive politicians was still simmering & most gay residents, as well as straight friends, were angered & outraged by the outcome of White's murder trial.

Thousands of people descended on the Castro to take part in a planned march to the Civic Center, where another large crowd had already gathered to protest the jury's decision.

As evening came, emotions boiled over & the crowd surged the building, smashing windows & trying to break through the front doors. A line of police cars parked nearby were set on fire, sending smoke & fire into the night sky.

In retaliation, police raided the Elephant Walk, a gay bar in the heart of the Castro. The culmination of these events became known as the White Night Riots & it took decades before the chasm between police & the city's LGBTQ community would be bridged.

Not all the protesters were part of the mayhem. A line of people had locked arms in front of City Hall in an attempt to hold back the crowd from doing further damage to the building. The events marked the last time that San Francisco’s gay citazens would be afraid to stand up & fight for their rights.

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, then a public school teacher, took part in the events of that night: "We were in no mood. This guy had killed a hero of ours & a friend of ours & he got treated like he had shoplifted. Dan White was a former cop & he got away with murder. In a strange way I am grateful that when the verdict came out people were not just silent. I am glad we were so vocal. I just thought it taught us you cannot be too docile. You really do have to be strong."

Mark Leno, an openly gay man now serving in the California State Senate: “The White Night Riots were the culmination of many changes that were impacting the city at that time. It was as if it all came to a head through the outrage of the injustice of Dan White's sentence. It was a jolt to the civic fabric as if we had to experience all of that to be able to move forward to become the city that we have become today. The experience I had at that time continues to inform my public office today. That we have had to fight for every right that we have gained & we have had to be vigilant every step of the way so as not to ever lose anything we have again.”

The next morning gay leaders convened in a committee room in the Civic Center. Supervisor Harry Britt, who had replaced Milk made it clear that nobody was going to apologize for the riots. Britt: "Harvey Milk's people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We're not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore."

The next day, May 22, would have been the 49th birthday of Harvey Milk. City officials had considered revoking the permit for a rally planned for that night, but decided against, fearing that it could sparking more violence. Officials stated that the rally could channel the community's anger into something positive. Police were placed on alert by Mayor Diane Feinstein, & my hero Cleve Jones worked on contingency plans with the police department. More than 20,000 people gathered on Castro & Market streets. The crowd created a peaceful celebration of Milk's life. They danced to disco, drank beer, & sang a tribute to Milk.

5 months later, on October 14, 1979, more than 100,000 people marched in a Gay Rights on Washington DC. Many marchers carried portraits of Milk. The rally, an event that Milk had help to organize, was instead a tribute to his life.

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May 22, 1930- Harvey Milk, a middle-class Jewish guy from NYC, served in the US Navy during the Korean War, who like so many other closeted gay people, chose San Francisco in the 1970s as that place to open the door to his true self & be in the company of his tribe.

Listen up, there is a history lesson to be learned. Sit down & watch the remarkable Oscar winning The Times Of Harvey Milk(1984) & the powerful Oscar winning Milk (2008), directed by my good close personal friend Gus Van Sant.

According to people who knew him, some of whom are friends of mine, Harvey Milk was no saint & not an easy man. He had a temper & a stubborn streak. But his sense of independence freed him from compromising party politics, allowing him to be controlled by his conscience rather than a debt owed to special interest groups. A true patriot, Milk had an absolute allegiance to The Declaration Of Independence & our Constitution, & a defiant defense of individual rights & individual participation in our political process. The Gay political establishment in San Francisco pushed against Milk, the man & the idea. As an openly gay man, Milk knew that whoever holds power, dictates the limits of individuality.

Milk was one of the true political pioneers of the 20th century. He was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won his seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. Now, 35 years later, all 50 states have been served by an openly gay person in office. My representative to the Oregon State House, Tina Kotek, lives in my neighborhood & my state, Oregon, now is served by an openly bisexual Governor, Kate Brown.

Milk’s struggles & his successes show that there is really no such thing as the Gay Agenda, there is simply freedom for all. His energy & his eloquent voice spoke for all minorities, all the voiceless citizens who are crushed in the American cultural conformity.

“All I ever seek is to open up a dialogue that involves all of us."

People told him that no openly gay man could possibly win political office. Thankfully for all of us, Milk ignored them. He knew that emotional trauma of being in the closet was the gays' worst enemy, worse than the haters. That made the election of an openly gay person crucial, practically & symbolically.

“It takes no compromise to give people their rights...it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.”

There was a time not that long ago when it was impossible to imagine Harvey Milk. Most people, straight & gay, had to adjust to what he represented: a gay person could live their life with honesty & still succeed. That revelation continues to this day as the rights of gay people move baby steps forward with Marriage Equality, & then a step backwards with Freedom Of Religious Expression laws like the one passed in Louisiana this week. With every gay character on TV & film, with every time POTUS mentions us, each politician of any party that embraces the cause, & each state that adds Equal Protection laws, we find that unequivocal equality becomes unquestionable, & that is due in large part to Harvey Milk.

"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Tragically, an assassin's bullet did vanquished his voice, but not his momentum. Milk would have celebrated his 85^th birthday today.

Today marks the 6th Harvey Milk Day, a legal holiday in California.

I am zany about architecture & design. Certain buildings & structures really grab my attention & move me, among them (these are structures that I have actually visited): The Woolworth's Building (NYC), the Duomo in Sienna, The Space Needle, The Hollywood Sign, Boston Public Library, The Brooklyn Bridge, Chateau de Versailles, Church of San Spirito (Florence) The Cliff Dwellings of Mesa Verde, The Eiffel Tower, The Empire State Building, The Flatiron Building, Freeway Park (Seattle), The Golden Gate Bridge, The Customs House (Portland), Leaning Tower of Pisa, Lovejoy Fountain Plaza (Portland), Lovell House (L.A.), Mount Vernon (Virginia), MOMA (NYC), Paris Metro Entrances, Piazza del Campo(Sienna), Piazza of San Marco (Venice), Rockefeller Center, Santa Maria Novella (Florence), San Simeon (California), Chiesa San Stefano (Venice), Sears Tower, or whatever it is call now (Chicago), Seattle Public Library, Seagram Building (NYC), Piazza San Marco (Venice), Statue Of Liberty, Stonehenge, The Louvre, The White House, Transamerica Pyramid (SF), The Custom House (Venice,), The Washington Monument, Watts Towers (L.A.), Capitol Records Building (Hollywood), Shaker Barns, Covered Brudges, Tuscan Farmhouses, Yurts, Fairie Structures at Collin’s Beach- Sauvie Isalnd, & St. Johns Bridge (Portland).

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My favorite man-made structure in the world is The Chrysler Building in NYC. At the beginning of the 20th century, the race for the tallest building in the world had commenced & The Chrysler Building was the first building to top the then tallest structure, The Eiffel Tower.

On the Island Of Manhattan, The Chrysler Building was in a race against Bank Of Manhattan at 40 Wall Street for the distinction of being tallest building in the world. It seemed certain that the Bank Of Manhattan would win that race, with an estimated height of 927ft against 755ft for the Chrysler Building, but the spire of the Chrysler Building was cleverly constructed in secret inside the tower.

Just a week after the Bank Of Manhattan had reached its top, the spire of The Chrysler Building was put in place, making it 1045ft high, beating the Bank Of Manhattan as the tallest building in the world. It would not keep this title for long, a year later the Empire State Building was erected.

The Art Deco Chrysler Building features gargoyles that depict Chrysler car ornaments & the spire is modeled on a radiator grille. The building's interior is even more magnificent than its exterior. The gorgeous marble floors & the Deco patterns on the elevator doors make the building one of the planet’s most beautiful towers.

When I lived in Manhattan in the mid-1970s, I never grew weary of looking up & catching a glimpse of this stunning building. Like most of the structures on my list, viewing them was made more special by watching the Husband’s reaction as he experienced these wonders of design.

What is your favorite structure on our pretty spinning blue orb?

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It gives me a heavy heart that so many people under 50 don't know about, or care about, many of the personalities that engaged those that came before them. I recently mentioned Mae West & Raquel Welch in the same sentence & a small group of 20-somethings who looked at me with totally blank faces. It was as if I had been speaking Hebrew.

Beatrice Lillie was an incomparable artist, a comedic actor known in the 1920s through the 1950s as "The Funniest Woman In The World”. She was born Constance Sylvia Gladys Munston, in Canada, the same nation that gave us Catherine O’Hara.

She began her stage career in London in 1914 & she became famous for her performances in music hall productions & in intimate revues. Lillie made her American debut in 1932. She developed & starred in her own TV series during the 1950s. She appeared in films including ON APPROVAL (1944) & THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (1967), although her special brand of magic worked best on the stage. In 1952, she created her own stage show; incorporating her greatest bits, called AN EVEVNING WITH BEATRICE LILLIE which opened on Broadway & then toured for years across the planet to rave reviews. Lillie won a Special Tony Award for her performance in 1953. She starred on Broadway in HIGH SPIRITS (1964) & replaced Rosalind Russell in AUNTIE MAME (1956). Lillie wrote a memoir EVERT OTHER INCH A LADY in 1972 before a suffering stroke in 1974.

In the first half of the 20th century, Lillie was one of the most sought after celebrities, the darling of the smart social set, & the toast of 2 continents. Cole Porter wrote his "story of a nightmare weekend"- THANK YOU SO MUCH, MRS. LOWSBOROUGH, GOOD-BYE, just for her, & Noel Coward wrote the delightfully gossipy I'VE BEEN TO A MARVELOUS PARTY for her. She gave the first ever public performance of Coward’s MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMEN in 1931.

In 1920, Lillie married Sir Robert Peel, making her Lady Peel, a name she used at social affairs. She eventually separated from her husband (but never divorced him). Lillie had love affairs with many women, including actresses: Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Le Gallienne, Gertrude Lawrence & Judith Anderson.

With her trademark cropped hair style, wearing a smart hat, holding a long cigarette holder, she was a true original, an enemy of pomposity & the sentimental. Fortunately, many of her satirical, surrealistic songs: THERE ARE FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF MY GARDEN, WEARY OF IT ALL, & my favorite, THIS IS MY FIRST AFFAIR (SO PLEASE BE KIND & PLEASE BE QUICK) are preserved on recordings, LPs & digital.

After her taking her final curtain call in 1989, Sir John Gielgud stated: "She was The Mistress of the Absurd, I remember Bea standing dramatically against a pillar dressed in a flowing gown which she lifted suddenly to reveal her feet shod in roller skates on which she gravely skidded across the stage".

Photograph by Yousuf Karsh,1948

Before the lovely Laverne Cox, before Alexis Arquette, before Chaz, even before Bruce broke the big news to Diane Sawyer& the world, a little boy from the Bronx became a lovely lady. It was 1952 & science was still popular, unlike our times. Engineers could build rocket ships, researchers could cure diseases, & medical doctors could turn a seemingly regular guy into a glamorous woman. This was an era before there was a T in the equal rights movement, before there was even an L,G, or B. In fact Transgender wasn’t even a term yet.

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Former Army Private George Jorgensen made headlines around the world when he returned to the USA from Denmark as a blond woman named Christine Jorgensen. Jorgensen shocked the world, & freaked out Americans. People were afraid & angry. They still are.

While serving in the Army, Jorgensen, who said that she had felt trapped in the wrong body since childhood, read an article about a doctor in Denmark who was experimenting with sex change & hormone therapy.

Brave Jorgensen was just 24 years old when she made the journey to Copenhagen to meet with Dr. Christian Hamburger who diagnosed the young GI as “transsexual”. Hamburger prescribed female hormones & encouraged Jorgensen to dress in women’s clothing. Hamburger & a psychologist had to petition the Danish government for permission to perform the illegal act of castration for surgical purposes.

Hamburger changed Jorgensen’s special stuff from male to female. Jorgensen chose Christine as her new female name in honor of her doctor.

Her transition made headlines when she returned to the USA in 1955. Curious crowdsrowd & journalists showed up at NYC’s Idlewild Airport to cover her return from Denmark. The December 1^st, 1952 headline on the cover of the NY Daily News read: “Ex-GI Becomes Blond Beauty”.

''At first I was very self-conscious & very awkward, but once the notoriety hit, it did not take me long to adjust.''

Jorgensen was resourceful & like a true American she was able to take that media attention & turn it into nightclub engagements. With a straight face, she sang I Enjoy Being a Girl& Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered as part of her act. My city of Portland’s own Mary’s Club, the oldest strip club in the USA (Portland has more strip clubs than churches) engaged Jorgensen with a long running gig as a go-go girl. Often the butt of TV comedian’s jokes, she always had a sly sense of humor about herself.

Jorgensen didn’t hide away. She became the first, but certainly not the last, transgender American to grab that publicity about her sex change & run with it, so to speak. All network news broadcasts, every major magazine & newspaper, & every popular radio show covered her transition. Books were written about her. She smartly wrote her own: Christine Jorgensen: A PersonalAutobiography, a bestseller in 12 languages, adapted into a film in 1970. She got a record deal & released Christine Jorgensen Reveals, a spoken-word album where she was interviewed by comedian Nipsey Russell. She even cut a few singles. Jorgensen made $12,000 a week performing her stage act in Hollywood. Other people who were considered “cross-gender” always existed, but no one had the guts to go public, become famous & make money until Jorgensen.

Just like in the 21^st century, the government didn’t know how to handle a change in gender. She sought a marriage license in 1959 but was denied because her birth certificate classified her as male. She had worked as a chauffeur, but her permit was revoked.

Jorgensen claimed that public reaction to her surgery was one of the first steps in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. She said that she never regretted her decision.The public acceptance of Jorgensen as a woman showed that gender & the body were not always connected, & that gender was something that a person could create. This changed the world in no small way.

Jorgensen lived a quiet private life after her notoriety had run its course. She resided at the famed The Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, occasionally taking speaking gigs. Lovely to look at, smartly dressed, with a smoky, sexy speaking voice, she would have been perfect for TV. In fact, at the end of her life she said that her only real regret was not appearing on Murder, She Wrote.

She never married & lived alone. Jorgensen took her final curtain call in 1989, gone from that damn cancer. She was just 62 years old. I like to imagine her still alive, living as the queen of the movement that she gave voice to.

“Does it take bravery & courage for a person with polio to want to walk? It’s very hard to speculate on, but if I hadn’t done what I did, I may not have survived. I may not have wanted to live. Life simply wasn’t worth much. Some people may find it easy to live a lie, I can’t. & that’s what it would have been… telling the world I’m something I’m not.”

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“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius & it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

53 years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains an enchanting enigma. She was once the most famous woman in the world & maybe the truest definition of “Movie Star” ever, but her real self will be forever out of reach. Monroe is the most endlessly talked about & mythologized figure in Hollywood history. She remains the ultimate superstar. Her rise & fall are the stuff that both dreams & nightmares are made of. Her estate continues to rake in millions. Just this weekend, yet another film about her life, The Secret Life Of Marilyn Monroeaired on something called the Lifetime network, with the great Susan Sarandon playing her mother Gladys (can someone please find Sarandon some film roles befitting her talent & stature in Hollywood so she can turn down Lifetime stuff?).

There have been nearly as many screen portrayals of Monroe as films that she herself made. I don’t any of them to be very good, certainly not fitting of Monroe’s legacy, but I watched one for a second time yesterday to prepare myself for this post. I thought that Michele Williams came close to getting Monroe right in the charming & cheeky My Week With Marilyn (2011). Williams accomplishes the near impossible, portraying Monroe as an actual person, not just an easily caricatured icon. The film centers around the production of Laurence Olivier's film The Prince & The Showgirl (1957). Based on a pair memoirs by Colin Clark, played in the film by adorable, freckled EddieRedmayne, who worked as an assistant on Olivier’s film. Williams captures not only Monroe’s fragility, both on-screen & off, but also her magical, unclassifiable charisma. My Weekend With Marilynentertained & touched me. I recommend this film.

Monroe, starred in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes(1953), The Seven YearItch (1955), How To Marry A Millionaire (1953), & Bus Stop (1956), but she wasn’t always Marilyn Monroe. She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson, appropriately, in LA.

She signed her first studio contract with 20th Century Fox in 1946 for $125 a week. Norma Jeane dyed her brunett hair blonde & changed her name.

A living contradiction, Monroe was divine & profane. She became both myth & metaphor as Hollywood’s most famous martyred saint. At the height of her fame, she had received 10,000 fan letters a week. Many were from men, but women wrote too, telling about the sadness in her eyes, her vulnerability & how they identified with her.

From Monroe’s first film, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), to her last, The Misfits (1962), she went from a studio created blonde bimbo to a well-trained, heartbreaking actor of depth & soul. She is beyond camp, making her different than Jayne Mansfield& Mamie Van Doren, who Hollywood chose to replace her. She turned out to be irreplaceable.

Amazingly, Monroe still sells magazines. I remember when the May 2012 issue of Vanity Fair arrived in my mailbox with Monroe on the cover. The issue featured even more "newly discovered" photographs of her by Lawrence Schiller. Never think you have seen the last of Monroe. Books have been devoted to her some lovely & filled with photographs, many lurid & badly written. Songs have been dedicated to her. Plays have been produced about her. She still sells millions of posters & calendars.

I am not certain that I would say that she was a fine actor, but she sure had something. My own favorite Marilyn Monroe performance is in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) one of the most perfect film comedies in history. Her performance seems like Champagne, bubbly & effortless. Odd, because Monroe was at her worst making this classic: perpetually tardy, unprepared, unable to remember her lines, pregnant & sick, calming herself with vodka & downers, making the shoot tough for pros Tony Curtis& Jack Lemmon. But, her role as Sugar Cane Kowalczy allowed her play the dumb blond without giving a dumb performance.

Gay men of a certain age held Monroe as an ultimate icon. She was a gorgeous, but tormented person, making a career out of being sexually & emotionally open in a brutal straight-male world. Monroe worked hard for her fame, but it was her suffering that we identified with the most. We wanted to save her. That was Monroe’s shtick. It worked.

We all know the sad story, with the battering studio heads, the husbands, the Kennedys, the Strasbergs, the acting coaches, the pills & the booze, the insecurities, the misunderstandings. We don’t need a Lifetime movie.

On an early morning in the summer of 1962, Monroe died in her sleep at her little stucco cottage on dead end street in Brentwood. She loved the house & had installed a plaque on the house with the Latin phrase "Cursum Perficio" which translated to "My Journey Ends Here”. Suicide, accident or murder? We will always specultate. She was just 36 years old. Monroe remains a most important Gay Icon. She would have celebrated her 89th birthday today.

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June 3, 1901- How astonishingly gay was that cast of Bewitched(1965-72): Paul Lynde, Dick Sargent, Agnes Moorehead, plus the star of the series ElizabethMontgomery, a supporter of gay rights before it was cool?

American TV audiences of the 1960s might remember Maurice Evans as Samantha's father, Maurice (the character was originally named Victor when he was introduced), onBewitched. I knew, of course, but most viewers were most likely unaware of Evans' stellar Shakespearean resume. Evans insisted that his first name was pronounced the same as the name 'Morris'. It was ironic then that his Bewitchedcharacter demanded that it be pronounced: 'Maw-REESE'.

Evans first appeared on the stage in 1926 & joined the Old Vic Company in 1934, playing Hamlet, Richard II& Iago in his first season. His first appearance on Broadway was in Romeo & Juliet opposite KatharineCornell in 1936, but he made his biggest impact in Shakespeare's Richard II, a production whose unexpected success was the surprise of the 1937 Broadway season & allowed Evans to play Hamlet in 1938, the first time that the play was performed in its entirety in NYC. Also on Broadway where he was much loved: Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I (1939), Macbeth (1941), & Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1942) opposite Helen Hayes as Viola.

During WW 2, Evans was in charge of an Army Entertainment Section in the Central Pacific & he played his famous 'G.I. version' of Hamletthat cut the text of the play to make Prince Hamlet more appealing to the troops, an interpretation so popular that he took it to Broadway in 1945.

Evans specialized in the works of George Bernard Shaw, notably as JohnTanner in Man & Superman& as King Magnus in The Apple Cart. He was also a successful Broadway producer of plays & musicals in which he did not appear.

Evans was a true pioneer, appearing in more American TV productions of Shakespeare plays than any other actor. Evans brought his Shakespeare productions to Broadway many times, playing Hamlet in 4 separate productions for a total of 883 performances, a Broadway record.

My favorite of Evans film roles is as Rosemary's friend Hutch in Rosemary's Baby (1968). Some of you kids might know him as orangutan Dr. Zaius in Planet Of The Apes(1968).

In my research I was not able to find out much about his lovers. Possibly, like other British actors of his generation, he preferred working class blokes & rough trade. Evans lived a great deal of his life in the USA, but in his last years, he returned to Britain. It does seem that one of Evan's former lovers was his business manager David 'Taffy' Barlow, who made Evans’ last days all the more comfortable by hiring young rent boys to strip down & lie in the bed with him. This quite shocked some of his deathbed visitors. Evans took his final bow in 1989, taken by that damn cancer. He was 87 years old.

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June 7, 1928- James Ivory is a great filmmaker. When asked to name a favorite film I usually answer with A Room With A View (1985), although that choice changes from moment to moment. But, the famous film is in a 10 way tie with other much loved films, but I name this film based on the 1908 E. M. Forster novel because of the time & place that I saw it & because it eventually led me to the trip of a lifetime, a month in Italy in 1991.

A Room With A View was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture & Best Director & won 3: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costumes & Best Production Design. A Room With A View was also voted Best Film of the year by The British Academy of Film & TelevisionArts, The National Board Of Review, & in Italy, where the film won the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture & Best Director for Ivory.

Ivory is known for his work in a long collaboration with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant & screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio formed Merchant Ivory Productions in 1961. Their films won 6 Academy Awards. Merchant was also Ivory's longtime partner in life as well as art. Their professional & romantic partnership lasted until Merchant's death.

Oregon’s own Ivory studied at the University Of Oregon, majoring in Architecture & Fine Arts & University Of Southern California Film School. He wrote, photographed, & produced Venice: Theme & Variations, a 30 minute documentary thesis film for his degree at USC. The film was named by The NY Times as one of the 10 best films of 1957.

Merchant Ivory will always be known for smart literary adaptations, restoring characterization, subtlety & period details to films in an era of explosions, aliens & special effects escapism. Their films were dismissed as yawners. Yet, A Room With A View, with a production budget of $7 million, grossed $55 million & left much anticipation for the next offering, the gay-themed Maurice (1987).

Maurice is an impassioned love story. E.M. Forster was gay guy in a period when homosexuality was a crime in Britain. He had demanded that the book, written in 1914, be published only after he died. Forster left this world in 1970.

Forster's literary executors tried to steer Merchant Ivory toward the writer's other works. They found it hard to find investors for their gay love story. Their collaborator Jhabvala declined to write the screenplay. Ivory co-wrote the script with Kit Hesketh-Harvey, an actor who had graduated from Cambridge where much of Mauricetakes place. Just before shooting began that year, Julian Sands, who had co-starred in ARoom With A View, opted out of playing the title role claiming personal reasons. Ivory was warned that during the new AIDS plague, a tale of homosexual passion was probably not a good bet for the box-office. The R-rated film shows men courting, kissing & making love.

Ivory:

"It would have be wrong to turn our faces from the homosexual community. We wanted the audience to root for a happy ending for the film's male lovers. People should be saying, 'I know what's in their hearts, I can feel for them.' Although the book was written over 90 years ago, it's completely relevant to today. The laws may have changed regarding homosexuality, but people's feelings, the dismay, panic & compromises, they endure remain the same."

In 1987, Maurice debuted at the Venice Film Festival where itreceived the Silver Lion Award for Best Film, Best Film Score & Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby& Hugh Grant. The film was received good reviews & made a profit.

Ivory & Merchant are the most impressive, impassioned, inspired & influential gay partnership in film history. The films of Merchant Ivory will always be loved for their visually sumptuous, smartly acted period pieces of literary works, produced on tiny budgets. The couple & their work were so closely intertwined that film fans assumed that "Merchant Ivory" was the name of one individual. With British literary & cultural traditions, their professional & personal relationship actually brought together diverse elements of American & Indian culture.

Other Merchant Ivory films based on gay literary sources include their adaptations of Forster's Howards End (1992), Carson McCullers's The Ballad OfThe Sad Café (1991, directed by gay actor Simon Callow), & Henry James's The Golden Bowl (2001).

Ivory had no problem gathering A-list actors willing to work for union scale: all of those darn Redgraves, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, SamWaterston, Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Reeve, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anne Baxter, Stanley Tucci, Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, Ralph Fiennes, Nick Nolte, Leslie Caron, & my boo Jeremy Northam.

In 2005, Merchant took his final bow, after a short illness. Ivory's last was The City Of Your Final Destination(2010), based on openly gay Peter Cameron’s novel. It is the only film he has made on his own. Ivory:

"Ismail was very much there to plan it, he bought the rights to the book & we went down to Argentina together to scout the location. We then went to China & made The White Countess&, when we returned to London, that was when he died. I had to finish The White Countess without him & how can I put this?... It took me some time to recover."

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Ivory lives in the 3 houses on the 3 continents that inspired his work as partners in film & life with Merchant. The made 35 films as a duo.

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June 8, 1933- Joan Alexandra Molinsky's death, sudden & unnecessary continues to shock me. I have been a fan for 50 years & I must admit I miss her very much. A comedy pioneer, Joan Rivers was transgressive & transporting, brash & bold. The first time I saw her was on The Tonight Show in 1965 & her shtick was the message that I needed to hear as a little gay child: “Life is very tough. If you don’t laugh, it’s even tougher. I’m in nobody’s circle. I’ve always been an outsider.”

Rivers was never afraid controversy in the service of her comedy. That is just one of the many reasons that I love her. For me, speaking a truth, saying out-loud what most other people are thinking, is the very essence of what is funny, a gasp & then a laugh.

“I am thrilled that Anderson Cooper finally came out of the closet, because this explains why he never tried to date me. I saw him as the perfect package. I would have loved Gloria Vanderbilt as a mother-in-law. This explains everything.”

For 6 decades Rivers changed how women were considered as stand-up comics in show biz. From her first appearances with Johnny Carson to Celebrity Apprentice(which she won & boosted her career) to Fashion Police, Rivers continued to lambast the sexual double standard. She was an Emmy winning talk show host, Tony nominated actor, bestselling writer, & a jewelry designer.

I always waited for her wrap-up of award shows best & worst dressed. The Husband & I laughed & wondered at the brilliant & honest documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work (2010), again with a gasp & then the big laugh.This documentary follows one year in the life of Rivers, with a calendar full of engagements, sometime several each day, working to support her opulent lifestyle, & to bolster her own sense of self-worth as a basically insecure person who was better known now for her overuse of cosmetic surgery rather than her own work as a comedy professional. She worked that full schedule up until the day she was killed.

I winced when shortly before she left this world, a friend on The Facebook referred to her as “that hag, Joan Rivers…”. But I loved Rivers because she unapologetically skewered everyone & everything that came in to her orbit. She injected crass & controversial cracks into the world of buttoned-up, male-dominated network TV shows, & the boys’ club of comedy clubs.

It might surprise friends to know that she was one of my idols, even though I try to keep my humor smaller & with a gentler touch. She did inspire me unafraid to say ANYTHING.

In 1989 Rivers became the host of The Joan Rivers Show, the first woman to host a late show, for which she won a her Emmy Award, & which famously got her barred from appearing on Carson's Tonight Show. After a decades-long shut-out, Rivers was invited back to The Tonight Show in 2014 by Jimmy Fallon.

In 2013 Rivers launched In Bed With Joan, a weekly Web series o interviews with celebrities. Rivers even got cozy with World Of Wonder star RuPaul Charles.

Rivers continued to cook up contrversy in the last year of her life. The comedian stormed out of a CNN interview after being questioned whether there should be boundaries on her jokes, particularly when it affects public figures.

"Life is very tough & if you can tell a joke to make something easier & funny, do it."

Rivers ignored the whole notion of “too soon.” Days after her the funeral of husband, Edgar, who had committed suicide, she claimed that she’d scattered his ashes at Neiman Marcus, so she could visit 5 times a week.

Rivers always wanted to be taken as a serious actor & she stated that comedy was a fall-back profession when she had trouble finding work on the stage. In 1959, at the start of career, she was cast opposite a then unknown Barbra Streisand an Off-Off-Broadway play Driftwood in which the pair of future gay icons played lesbians & had a kissing scene.

“This was before she was singing, before anything. I knew she was talented, but you never know what someone will be. She was a fabulous kisser, that’s what I knew.”

Rivers was also one of show biz’s most vocal supporters of LGBT equality. Speaking out, having gay guests on her TV shows & serving on the board of the HIV services organization God’s Love We Deliver from its very start.

“My gay fans have been wonderful from day one. I remember when I was working at the Duplex in Greenwich Village at the beginning of my career & the only ones who would laugh at my jokes were the gay guys. I think if I had started out in straight clubs & bars I never would’ve gotten anywhere.”

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I am acquainted with several people that knew or met Rivers & claimed that she was a most generous & loving friend. My buddy on the Facebook & Instagram, the handsome & talented David Dangle, a 3 time Emmy winning designer, was Rivers right-hand-gay & is CEO of her QVC brand. He suffered a terrible loss at her passing & has praised his dear friend’s generosity & spirit.

At her 5th Avenue palace, River had a pillow that had stitched on it the phrase: “Don’t Expect Praise Without Envy Until You Are Dead.” Rivers had long stated that when she died she’d be sanctified just like Lenny Bruce, her hero. That adage proved true. After her death, last September, the praise came from friends & foes, all naming her as a trailblazer & a force of nature.

For me,The Imitation Game(2014) was a somewhat pedestrian film about an extraordinary man. It is a good film, you should see it. It was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. GrahamMoore’s Oscar nomiated screenplay had been kicking around Hollywood for years & the story deserves to be told. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum led the cast, including my boo Benedict Cumberbatch (Oscar nominated), whose performance was vulnerable, compelling, & persuasive, the rest of uniformly excellent cast included:MarkStrong, Keira Knightley (Oscar nominated), Charles Dance& yummy Matthew Goode. I am not certain while ended up thinking the whole thing played a little flat. But, having audiences experience this story is a good thing. Most people did not know of Alan Turing, the British cryptanalyst who saved the world from fascism during WW2. I have to be honest, because his contribution is outside of the subjects of arts & literature, I would not have known of his life but for the play & film in the late 1990s, Breaking The Code, starring openly gay actor Derek Jacobi. I find this version a bit more engaging than last year’s film.

He saved the world from the Nazis & the importance to the modern world of the mathematical, philosophical, & cryptographic work of Alan Mathison Turing cannot be overestimated.

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A once-in-a-generation gifted mathematician, Turing is as one of the founders of computer science. The Turing Machine was an abstract device that "consists" of an infinite paper tape & a reading device that can move forwards & backwards altering what is on the tape. Despite its simplicity, it remains a model for all aspects of the world of computer today. It was the prototype for all actions that can be performed by computers. It is amazing that he invented it before computers as we know them today even existed.

His most significant accomplishment was being responsible for cracking the "unbreakable" German codes during WW2. Given the limited resources the British had, the precise knowledge of German intentions allowed the British to concentrate those resources so that they could achieve battle superiority. Turing's contribution to the Allie victory over the Nazis in the greatest of wars ranks as high as anyone else, even Winston Churchill.

Despite the fact that he may have been the most brilliant scientist of his generation & basically saving everyone on the planet, Turing was discarded & deemed a security risk because of his homosexuality. We must remember him not only for his work with computers & deciphering the Enigma machine codes during WW2, but also because of his needless, horrific death during an age of institutionalized homophobia. He committed suicide at just 41 years old, 2 years after his arrest, conviction, & forced chemical castration for his gayness.

After the war, Turing had decided to open the closet door just a bit, but it was the start of time when there was a change from silence to active persecution of homos in Britain. After his pioneering work in computers, software design, & artificial intelligence, Turing was elected a Fellow Of The Royal Society at an unusually young 22 years old. This should have been the best time of his life, living as a true hero & respected researcher, but in 1948 Turing's life took a very bad turn.

He had moved to Manchester after accepting a position as Deputy Director at the Royal Society Computing Laboratory at the University Of Manchester. He became involved with a young working class bloke, Murray Arnold, who would later break into his home.

Turing reporting the burglary, but he was arrested & prosecuted for what was then known under British law as “Gross Indecency”, the law under which Oscar Wilde had also been charged in 1895. During this ordeal, he remained defiantly open & unapologetic about his sexuality. After the trial, Turing was offered a stark choice: go to prison or submit to the administration of the hormone estrogen, intended to suppress his deprived libido.

This treatment left Turing impotent. He also developed breasts. His security clearances were revoked & he was unable to resume his pioneering work in the new field of Computer Science. 2 years after his arrest & 1 year after the barbaric torture therapy, Turing took his own life.

He left no note & the circumstances of his death remain inadequately investigated & left deliberately murky. It is commonly thought that he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide. Turing probably drank the cyanide but left an apple by his bed. It was a grim joke against his reputation for being impractical. It also allowed for those who wanted to believe that he had taken the poison by mistake. But, Turing knew the apple was the symbol of death from the Snow White story. It is also rumored that he was murdered by his own government. How farfetched is that? A civilized nation doesn’t bump-off its own citizens.

His story is tragic, but there are some twists in his story that despite everything, I like to think Turing would find comedic or at least ironic & that he might enjoy: On Christmas Eve 2013, Queen Elizabeth 2 signed a pardon for Turing's conviction for gross indecency, with immediate effect. This was only the fourth royal pardon granted since the end of WW2. Turing’s pardon was also unusual in that pardons are normally only granted only when the person is technically innocent, and a request has been made by a family member. Neither condition was met in regard to Turing's original conviction. Turing’s royal pardon is one of the positive things provoked by that Internet thing.People started an online campaign compelling Prime Minister Gordon Brown to make an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing had been treated after the war. Both pardons sent Religious Right Wing Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic into fits.

The city of Manchester has celebrated Turing's life & achievements. There is now a major road called Alan Turing Way & a statue of Turing in a park in Manchester's Gay Village. There is also a statue at the University of Surrey, close to Turing's childhood home. In June 2007 a new statue of Turing was unveiled at Bletchley Park Research Center, where he carried out his work during the war. Fittingly, tributes continue in a most lovely way, many computer conference centers, research labs & university facilities are named for Turing. I lost track counting to 50.

Although the company has denied it, Steve Jobs, when queried, stated: “God, we wish it were true”,but I doubt that is a coincidence that Jobs named his company Apple.

Turing would have to be pleased that Cumberbatch was chosen to portray him.

“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.”

I'll Cry Tomorrow

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"When you`re dead, you`re dead. No one is going to remember me when I`m dead. Oh, maybe a few friends will remember me affectionately. Being remembered is not the most important thing anyhow. It`s what you do when you are here that`s important."

I was late in coming to appreciate Susan Hayward. When I was younger I was not attracted to the turgid, soapy films that seemed to be her specialty. Her films blended into one big melodrama about a pill popping alcoholic on death row who sings an overwrought song just before she dies. After revisiting VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967) in the aughts, I came to appreciate her stunning beauty & her style, & her portrayals of strong determined women.

She worked as a photographer’s model in NYC before traveling to Hollywood in 1937 to audition for David Selznick hoping for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND. She was not even seriously considered, but Hayward managed to secure a contract after the screen-test & was given her new name by her first manager.

Hayward's first film appearance was as a ‘Starlet At Table’ in HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (1937). Hayward played a lot of minor roles, she later said that she “really paid her dues” as a newcomer. The determined Hayward finally earned a more interesting role in BEAU GESTE (1939) opposite Gary Cooper.

She made a strong impression opposite John Wayne in REAP THE WILD WIND (1942) & played opposite Wayne again in THE FIGHTING SEABEES (1949). In a crazy coincidence, REAP THE WILD WIND is the title header for a chapter in my memoir. Hayward’s roles & her film projects improved in the early 1950s & her popularity with the audiences increased.

Hayward’s performance in SMASH-UP: THE STORY OF A WOMAN (1947) was an introduction to the type of strong-willed woman she would often portray. In this flick her portrayal of an alcoholic club singer earned Hayward an Academy Award nomination. Susan received another Oscar nomination for her work in MY FOOLISH HEART (1950). In 1951, she starred opposite Gregory Peck in the nutty Biblical epic DAVID & BATHSHEBA. Her third Academy Award nomination came for her terrific performance in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART (1952), based upon the real life story of singer Jane Froman who persevered after being seriously injured in a plane crash. Hayward gave another strong performance in the bio-pic of Lillian Roth, I’LL CRY TOMORROW (1955). Roth had been a singing star of the 1920s & 1930s who survived to write about her life as an alcoholic. Hayward was nominated again for an Oscar.

Hayward finally won her Oscar, plus the NY Film Critics Award, & the Golden Globe for I WANT TO LIVE!, the fictionalized story of Barbara Graham, an innocent woman sentenced to die.

I really identify with Hayward. Oddly enough, I WANT TO LIVE, I'LL CRY TOMORROW, & SMASH-UP are titles of chapters in my own memoir- JOCKSTRAPS & VICODIN. Perhaps Miss Hayward was a big influence on my early life.

In 1972 Hayward was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. In 1956 she had worked on the film THE CONQUERORS which was filmed in the Utah desert. The film location was 137 miles from a nuclear testing site that was fully in use at that time. Crew & cast of that movie included John Wayne, Agnes Moorehead, Dick Powell, John Hoyt, & Pedro Armendáriz, all died from cancer. Of the 144 people involved in making this film, 91 developed cancer & 46 had died from the fucker by 1972.

Hayward appeared in more than 60 films & many TV programs. She left this world too young, at age 57 in 1975. Intensely private, she was perceived as cold, icy, aloof, & not one for small talk or press interviews, but she was known as a smart conversationalist among her small group of friends. She did not like socializing in crowds.

Hayward intensely disliked homosexuals & effeminate males. Hayward & I have that in common... just kidding. I love a super butch guy, but I am a sucker for a sissy. She turned down a role because George Cukor was the director. Susan was a John Wayne sort of girl. Ironic because she would become a Gay Camp Icon because of her emotional, hyper, overstrung portrayals, especially as Helen Lawson in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, a Universal Gay Favorite.

Directors enjoyed Hayward’s professionalism on the set & her high standards for acting. She was considered easy to work with, but she was not chummy after the film stopped rolling. I find her to be one of the most beautiful actresses of her era. Susan Hayward was greatly admired for her strong individualism. You have to admire that even in a homophobe.

December 7, 1873- Willa Cather:

“The end is nothing; the road is all.”

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When she was just 14 years old and living in Nebraska, Willa Cather began dressing as a boy and calling herself William. This continued when she attended the University Of Nebraska. Later, when she could choose a fictional world to live in, she would usually write with an emphasis on her male characters. She is famous for her odes to life in the Midwest, like O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), but she lived most of her adult life in NYC, where for four decades, she lived with her partner EdithLewis, a noted NYC editor.

Nebraska is often a jumping off point for her work, but her 12 novels cover an incredible range of subjects: Song Of The Lark (1915) is about an opera singer who travels around the world. One Of Ours, which won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, is about a man enlisting to fight in WW I after his wife leaves to do missionary work in China. Her masterpiece, Death Comes For TheArchbishop(1927), is about a bishop and a priest and their attempts to establish a church in the New Mexico Territory. Her talent was nourished and inspired by the American scene, the Mid-West in particular, and her sensitive and patient understanding for what we now call the Red States informed the basis of much her work. She is remembered for her exquisite economy of language and her charming manner.

Cather specialized in plot lines and characters that reveal both the freedom of the artist to create and the social rejection of imagination. InMy Ántonia, the patriarch of a Bohemian immigrant family is a farmer, but he has no skills for such a life. He is a violinist, a refined man who dresses for a dignified life. The unforgiving conditions of life on The Plains, which he knows will eventually provide his children with a future, smother him. At his breaking point, he takes his own life. The locals, who are written as sympathetic up to that point, will not allow the defeated man's body to be buried in the community cemetery. Instead, he is placed at the crossroads of two roads outside of town.

A Lost Lady (1923) is the story of the Mid-West in the age of the building of railroads. It is a tale of the charming wife of a retired contractor, and her hospitable household as seen through the eyes of an adoring boy. The climax of the book, with the disintegration of the household and the slow hardening of the wife. It is told in vivid, haunting prose.

The same sort of situation is played out in some of Cather's short stories like Paul's Case (1905) and The Sculptor's Funeral (1905), but in these stories the main characters read as gay.

In Paul’s Case, Paul in a Pittsburgh high school student who is frustrated with his middle-class existence. He wants another sort of life, one where he attends concerts and the theater, even if his appreciation of the arts is more social and superficial than aesthetic. He enjoys the symphony not for the music but for the atmosphere: "The lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor." Paul steals money to escape to NYC, but after the funds are spent, he commits suicide rather than allow his father to take him back to Pittsburgh.

In The Sculptor’s Funeral, the body of Harvey Merrick, a famed sculptor, is brought back to his parent’s house in small town Kansas. Only his childhood friends, Jim and Henry, show any real emotion, and wonder how he ever made it out of the town. Before the funeral, the town's leading citizens make fun of Merrick for his education and uppity lifestyle, Jim and Henry attack their hypocrisy in criticizing Merrick. They lash out at the people in the town by exposing the corruption of their ideals, their gambling, shootings and adultery. Henry claims that Merrick escaped that life and that this was why the town's leaders hate him. Jim is disgusted with himself for having not left the town like Merrick, and he gets too drunk to attend the funeral. The story ends Jim dying from pneumonia shortly after the ceremony.

In one of her first stories, Tommy, The Unsentimental (1899), a Nebraskan girl with a boy's name, and who looks like a boy, saves her father's bank business.

In O Pioneers!, with its title taken from the great gay Walt Whitman's poem of the same name, the main characters are shunned because of their eccentricities, individuality, and what is perceived as a lack of focus in life.

She is so identified as being from the Middle of America, but Cather was born in Virginia. When she was 8 years old, her family moved to Nebraska and bought a farm near the small town of Red Cloud. As a child, she did not go to school, but spent many hours reading the classics with her two grandmothers. Later, when her family moved to town, she attended high school and then the University Of Nebraska.

She spent a few years in Pittsburgh teaching and doing newspaper work, but each summer she visited in Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming.

Cather's first collection of stories was The Troll Garden (1905) which is not about the comments section on The Facebook. It was published by McClure-Phillips, and two years later she became an associate editor for McClure's Magazine and moved to NYC. She then became the managing editor of the publication for the next four years.

During this period, she wrote very little, but she traveled to Europe and the American Southwest. In 1912, she gave up editorial work to write full time.

In 1931, she was named by the great gay English writer J.B. Priestley, as this country's greatest novelist. She received honorary degrees from the University Of Michigan, Columbia University, Yale and Princeton. Plus, in1962 Cather was elected to the Nebraska Hall Of Fame; in 1973 the USPS honored Cather by issuing a stamp with her image; in 1981, the U.S. Mint created a Willa Cather gold coin; in 1986, Cather was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall Of Fame.

For me, Cather’s novels can easily be read as an early commentary on gay life in America. But, when I read her work in my university’s American Literature courses, Cather's gayness was never mentioned, of course.

Among her many lovers were her college pal Louise Pound, Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe and at whose home lived, opera singer Olive Fremstad; pianist Yaltah Menuhin, and, of course Edith Lewis, with whom Cather shared her life for 40 years.

In the mid-1970s, my NYC boyfriend, a native, would take me on Literary Tours of the city. He pointed out the apartment that Cather and Lewis shared at 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village, and their final place at 570 Park Avenue.Lewis was named executor of Cather's literary estate when Cather was taken by cerebral hemorrhage in 1947. Lewis published a memoir of her life with Cather titled Willa Cather Living (1953).

Cather and Lewis could not be open about their relationship in their era, but they are together forever, buried next to each other in the Old BuryingGround near Jaffrey, New Hampshire, a favorite vacation spot for the couple. I managed to visit this place once, in the company of my favorite professor, who I had a crush on. There is a prominent Willa Cather headstone placed above both their graves, it reads:

"That is happiness; to be dissolved

into something complete and great."

From My Ántonia

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May Day, My Way

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